Welcome! I'm Bari Tessler Linden. I teach people how to build their own bridges between money, body, mind and spirit. Along the way, we eat chocolate. We linger in unconditionally loving spaces. We find deeper meanings and follow clues. We develop conscious relationships with ourselves. And we move from feeling lost deep in the financial woods into our own custom-built log cabins.

It all began inside a ridiculously tiny log cabin in the woods.

Flip chart paper everywhere. Colored markers. 400 square feet of wild excitement. I believe there was an audible zap.

 A few months earlier, my mentor Tamara had seen something that I had been unable to see. My true calling.

"I'm teaching a workshop on Women, Vision, and Money, and I want you to give a talk on the psychological and spiritual meaning in bookkeeping," my mentor told me. "I'll take care of everything. Just show up."

The year was 2001, and I'd recently started a bookkeeping business.  But I was pretty far from having a conscious relationship with money at that point, and I was slowly chipping away at a $60,000 student loan.

I did, however, have a conscious relationship with myself.

I'd been steadily working with my own patterns for years, all through my 20's, from grad school at Naropa University as a Somatic Psychology student to writing a thesis on helping young women listen to their bodies. I did so much work on love, intimacy, sex, food, the body, death, God, spirituality, gender... And finally, on to money.

The Women, Vision, Money class was a success. I started teaching my first official Conscious Bookkeeping class a couple of months after that.

Which brings me back to the cabin in the woods, where my husband, Forest Linden and I conceived the Conscious Bookkeeping Method, named it and mapped out the Three Doorways:

  Financial Therapy, Values Based Bookkeeping and Life Vision Planning. 

An elegant solution appeared seemingly out of nowhere. But it was not out of nowhere.  It had taken years of deep self-inquiry, gently looking at my own patterns, gently shifting them and exploring possibilities.  It had also taken years of professional experiences that didn't seem to fit together - until they did.

Here is the abridged story of my professional life, in 12 movements:

1. Received Masters of Arts in Somatic Psychology from Naropa University.
2. Wrote 150-page thesis on helping young women listen to their bodies using authentic movement.
3. Did 10 years of field work in the Mental Health Profession & Hospice.
4. Have offered 20 years of facilitation in therapy and coaching modalities for individuals, couples & groups.
5. Owned and operated a bookkeeping business for artists, consultants & contractors.
6. Started a financial therapy business and method called Conscious Bookkeeping in 2001. It struck a chord.
7. Expanded one-woman show into a cross-functional Alliance team of accounting, psychology, coaching, tax and investment professionals, helping more than 3,500 people change their relationships with money, create practical steps, and see the deeper meanings behind them.
8. Gave hundreds of presentations and live workshops on the Conscious Bookkeeping process and method.
9. Discovered one of my most valuable gifts:  Holding an unconditionally loving space for other people while being completely present and helping them move forward into a method of working with their finances that is aligned with what is most important to them. And consuming therapeutic chocolate as desired.
10. Appeared on the cover of Experience Life magazine—how fun is that!
11. Evolved back into a one-woman rockin' show as a mommypreneur and created a business model to support a life in alignment with these values, which includes spending lots of time with my husband and son.
12. Launched 4 online Programs in 2011! 

Understanding money and consciously relating to it was my missing piece.  It's the piece that has turned into the biggest ally in my life-long desire to "bridge heaven with earth"- to manifest my most lofty dreams and visions in the concrete, everyday world.  It's done this for me and for so many other people as well.

My life's work is to create services where you feel safe to transform your relationship to money, body, mind & spirit.

You can find the space, safety and tools needed for this exploration here:

1. Introductory Video Course
2. Wake Up With Mint Course
3. Conscious Bookkeeping Home Study
4. Private Financial Therapy available to a select group
5. Group Coaching Program 

How to find me:

• This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Facebook: baritesslerlinden 
• Twitter: baritessler

25 things about me that people tend to find surprising

1. I have eaten chocolate almost every day of my entire life.
2. I have always loved having lots of freckles. I just think they are cool. And I proudly won a freckle contest at the Skokie Fair when I was 8 years old.
3. I grew up going to New York every year to visit my 2 gay uncles. One was my biological uncle and the other was his partner of many years. My uncles wore black leather pants and purple ties to my bat mitzvah, were a highlight of my childhood and taught me a lot around my own sexuality.
4. My uncles eventually moved to Chicago, and together with my family, in addition to owning real estate, owned gay bars that I bartended in during my early 20's and had a blast.
5. As a 12 year old, I could not decide what I was going to be when I grew up... a Solid Gold Dancer or a Business Woman.
6. During my childhood, my family would visit my Great Aunt Belle who was a good 350 pounds and play yatzee with her for hours. She was a loud, strong woman and thought we all were the greatest things since sliced cornbeef.
7. When I was 20 – 25 years old, I lost four of my favorite men to death: 2 Uncles to aids, 1 Israeli Boyfriend to suicide and 1 Grandpa while sitting in his favorite chair listening to his favorite opera.
8. When my husband and I first got together 11 years ago, I looked through a mirror and saw a baby boy spirit wanting to incarnate through us....I typically don't walk around seeing spirits, but I did :)
9. I told the spirit 'thanks', but 'no thanks and that "I am not having kids this time around" and then I turned 38 years old and there was only one next step on my path and it was crystal clear....to have a baby boy.
10. Forest and I conceived Noah on the first try.
11. I LOVE the smell of my son and my husband. I spend a good amount of time smelling them often.
12. My husband named an alter ego of mine, 'Bill'. He is the one who started my business, Conscious Bookkeeping, 10 years ago, ran it for many years and especially could be heard on business phone calls, because he has a very clear, direct, extremely punctuated way of communicating that I normally do not have. (Bill is not around anymore...I do business and life as the integrated feminine, Bari.)
13. After not owning a t.v. for 18 years, we now own a large one, and I am addicted to Top Chef, Project Runway and Fringe.
14. I have a thing for CIA operative movies.
15. I love novels and go through periods in my life where I devour them and then other phases where I do not read at all.
16. 90% of my previous boyfriends are not on facebook.
17. I was very close with my mother when I was growing up. Then we went through the teenager phase and she nicknamed me 'Bitch Lips'. I could have given her the same nickname. We are now, and have been for many years, very close again and talk almost every day.
18. I fluctuate between a 3 and a 4 on the Enneagram and sometimes feel like 2 different people. This means that I can be socially shy, self–reflective, needing lots of space and quiet, could care less what I wear or look like, on the one hand, and a confident performer, teacher, presenter, connector, making sure my image, clothing, hair is just so, on the other hand.
19. Supposedly I am one of the silliest and goofiest people my husband knows....but this is because he lives with me and this side of me only comes out in its full colors in our home.
20. I feel abundant when I have a good supply of lotions. Flowers additionally bring a similar feeling for me.
21. I love hot, hot, showers in the winter and cold, cold showers in the summer.
22. Sometimes, I am so tired these days, due to my baby boy's sleep patterns, that I make myself a pot of coffee without putting the coffee in...
23. I miss the old me that would kick butt on the dance floor and hope that one day I will get to revisit my African Dance days.
24. I am so grateful that I arrived at my 40th birthday with my baby boy, Noah and my wonderful husband, Forest. They are the foundation of my life.
25. If labor did not kick my ass so much I just might consider having another baby.

(Originally written, February 2009, during the Facebook craze when everyone was doing the '25 Random Things' exercise)

Lest you depart from this page without hearing our family theme song...